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The trees which produce them grow sometimes wild, though occasionally they are cultivated; and the frankincense-tree grows sometimes taller than the tree producing the myrrh."
I wonder whether the myrrh which Nicodemus used to embalm the body of our Saviour for His burial came from Arabia? In Matthew's gospel we read of the wise men who came from the East to worship Jesus. "And when they had opened their treasures they presented unto Him gifts; gold and frankincense and myrrh."
My Father's face was hidden, and behind the thick clouds of darkness I saw a stern, vindictive Being, to whom the smoke of human suffering was more acceptable than frankincense and myrrh. I compared myself wandering alone in darkness and sorrow, on such an awful errand, to the fair, smiling being cradled in wealth, then doubtless sleeping in her bed of down, watched by attending menials.
The daylight melting into gloom or colored with fantastic brilliancy, priests in effulgent robes chanting in unknown language, the sublime breathing of choral music, the suffocating odors of myrrh and spikenard, suggestive of the oriental scenery and imagery of Holy Writ, all combined to bewilder and exalt the senses.
And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?
There are people who take a pleasure in making collections of all such fortuitous occurrences that they have heard or read of, as look like works of a rational power and design; they observe, for example, that two eminent persons, whose names were Attis, the one a Syrian, the other of Arcadia, were both slain by a wild boar; that of two whose names were Actaeon, the one was torn in pieces by his dogs, the other by his lovers; that of two famous Scipios, the one overthrew the Carthaginians in war, the other totally ruined and destroyed them; the city of Troy was the first time taken by Hercules for the horses promised him by Laomedon, the second time by Agamemnon, by means of the celebrated great wooden horse, and the third time by Charidemus, by occasion of a horse falling down at the gate, which hindered the Trojans, so that they could not shut them soon enough; and of two cities which take their names from the most agreeable odoriferous plants, Ios and Smyrna, the one from a violet, the other from myrrh, the poet Homer is reported to have been born in the one, and to have died in the other.
Frankincense and myrrh were the productions of Arabia; the other articles of India; of course the former could be procured with much less difficulty and expence than the latter. Spikenard, another Indian commodity, also reached Rome, through Arabia, by means of the port of Alexandria.
If through the evil quality of the womb, make a suffumigation of red styrax, myrrh, cassia-wood, nutmeg, and cinnamon; and let her receive the fumes into her womb, covering her very close; and if the odour so received passes through the body to the mouth and nostrils, she is fruitful.
As the bridegroom says to the bride, in Cant. iii., "Thou hast two breasts like two young roes; they are as though they were hung with a bundle of myrrh;" as the bride says, Cant. i., "My beloved is like a bundle of myrrh that lies continually between my breasts." That is, we should ever preach Christ.
The other exports were gums, drugs, tortoise-shell, incense, frankincense, brought from distant places; ivory, and a small quantity of myrrh. The abundance of aromatic articles, which the Greeks procured on this part of the coast, induced them to give the name of Aromatic to the whole country, and particularly to the town and promontory at the eastern extremity of it.
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